Was eSports worth it?

Was my career in eSports worth all the time and effort I put into it? A lot of people want to become a professional gamer or a manager of some sorts but is it worth all the effort?

I have always been an avid gamer from the commodore to the nes to the pc I have played on all of them. So when I first got introduced to the concept of online gaming I was obviously very interested and excited.
I played a lot of Counter-Strike from the start, often 7 to 8 hours a day. I quickly got sort of good and had some local fame. From here I got lucky and came into contact with several people which gave me a whole range of opportunities.
It started with a Belgian player named Slikatel inviting me to Multiplayer Madness, which was the largest Belgian LAN party. We easily won the tournament and my first LAN was a fact. Later on my former teammate Pesticide invited me to help out at CPL Europe Holland which was my first taste as an organiser or admin within eSports. At CPL Europe I met Ralf Reichert who gave me a lot of great opportunities within SK together with Andreas and Alex. While in SK I got more into the journalism and organising part of eSports as I visited events and ran SK Insider while also helping out with the internal workings of SK. At ESWC 2004 I met Sebastian Weisshaar who later on offered me a real job at Turtle Entertainment, the parent company of ESL. Thanks to the work experience I gained at Turtle Entertainment I was able to find a job as an IT consultant back home in Belgium.

The above is a short description of my history as I see it. If you look at the above and see all the connections you would be right in saying that thanks to eSports I am where I am today. But the above spans over about 8 years or so, which means it took quite a long time for me to find a steady job and live a "normal" life like other people would do who study and find a job.
This is what got me thinking, was it all worth it? I have been to some great places and met some fantastic people from all over the world but at the same time I often neglected my childhood friends because I had to practice or travel to places. Of course my studies also suffered greatly from my time invested into eSports but if I'm honest I think I would have just wasted that time on something other than my studies anyway.

Overall I should be thankful for having the experiences I had and be greatful that it helped me become who I am today but still I can't help but wonder was it all worth it, wasn't there a shortcut I could have taken if I hadn't been sucked into the world of eSports?



GamesConvention Day 3

Saturday is over, thank god for that. The day started off well with a great match between norway and sweden. Norway though were pretty late at the event because one of the players was out drinking until 7 in the morning meaning he had only one hour of sleep. When norway finally arrived team sweden wasnt back from teir breakfast yet which i granted them because they had been waiting for over an hour. Anyway all worked out quite good and the match went very well for sweden. They once again showed some great play and made themselves heavy favourites for the title this year.
After the match there wasnt much to do as for cs but with fifa and wc3 games going on it was still very busy around the progaming area. The next cs match was at 4 between germany and poland. the crows was really rooting for the germans, duh, but they did not impress that much, they had a nice comeback in store for us but overall they got wiped by Poland. The german players were really disappointed about the performance and walked off.
After this final match the countdown to the players party started. a lot of people gathered around the arena and when the gates were opened the seats got quickly taken. Luckily there was a vip area for the staff and the players. The ceremony looked really nice and professional, being broadcasted live on german tv. The english of most of the speakers wasnt that good though, but most of the presenters had some great thoughts in their speeches and hopefilly they reached out to the companies, the media, the players, publishers etc etc so the sport can grow even bigger.
Im not gonna comment on all the awards given out because some were clearly biased and wrong because of the small jury. I guess i just commented on the awards afterall. Anyway congrats to all winners and overall it is a very nice thing to have to show to the outside world.
After the awards show ended everyone was waiting for the party to start. unfortunately they still had to set up the dj booth etc so that by the time the dj started to play most of the people were already at the sony party which was in the opposite corner of the hall. Both the esl and sony parties had free drinks so you can imagine how many drunk people were walking about. As always the pros got surrounded by all kinds of girls but for some weird reason bds wa talking to 3 or 4 little boys who were also sitting in the seats with sk. everyone was having a lot of fun and according to several persons at the sony party a certain warcraft player is the worst dancer ever. but i guess you dont have much control over yourself when you are that drunk.
I have seen a lot of people at the party and if i would have to tell you how many people were NOT drunk i would probably not get further then 5 persons, including myself.
A lot happened near the end of the party but thats not for me to share. You will probably hear a lot of stories but as i said before, most people were drunk so the stories wil most likely be made up or losely based on actual events.
Lets just say that people reading this should think twice about how much they drink because it could have some nasty effects if you dont.



GamesConvention Day 2

Yesterday was a pretty busy day for CS here at the Intel arena. Germany had to face off against Norway and element was pretty confident about the match as usual. He was right though as GErmany werent really able to stop the solid play from the Norwegians. Kapio again showed some class but overall the norwegians were way too stong.
The next game was Sweden vs poland. I met up with spawn and asked who the team captain was, he stated "I am". My next question was, so who is gonna lead ingame, his answer was "uuuuuh no one" "All of us I think". While we laughed about the fact that they had no real tactician in the team walle and the others said "oscar" would be calling. Oscar of course is ins. I also spoke to him about how he is doing in NiP and well lets just say he isnt unhappy with the team he has. But will he join, thats for the future and NiP to decide. SpawN also said he was happy for SK that they won the Extreme Masters qualifiers and that they deserved it, he would like to get revenge though.
Anyway the game between poland and sweden ended in favor of the Swedes but you could clearly see they are missing a player like walle or vilden or carn who can lead the team and make the important decisions. zet, just like in NiP, was once again the big motivator of the team, yelling with every kill and telling the team to keep on going.
After the ENC matches we had a litle break before the iFNG would start. mousesports however came 1,5 hours in advance and played some public and aimmaps after they had setup. Fleks was walking around looking a bit sad because he couldnt play this match after a screw up in a 2on2 game on esl.eu. During the game though fleks did his job as a coach and help the coordination between the players who were sitting at the far ends of te tables.
The match was very close and mousesports managed to win the game even with django playing. Johnny R still needs a lot of adjusting and training btw, he looks rusty after all that inactivity.
With the games finished an no party on friday we decided to go ack to our hotel at about 7. After some tv and poker we went to bed at about 22 because saturday will be a looooooong day with work starting at 8 at the GC and then at night there will be the esports awards party so it could very well be 20hours of walking around and working etc.
More about saturday tonight or tomorrow, it will be juicy btw as one of the norwegians went out drinking on friday.



Games Convention Day 1

I actually arrived last night but today was the first day of competitions and work for me. I got at the event at about 8:30 which was well in time for the first match at 14:00 CET.
Before noon we set up the 2 cs servers and the hltv needed to cover the games for all of you. After some succesfull network tests all we had to do was wait for the CS players.
The 4K players were here again early in the morning and starting playng games immediately, they actually played last night as well. and they continued playing today untill the party started so in these two days that i have been here i have seen them playing for at least 10 hours already while they only had one match. These guys are real pro it seems and play A LOT.
Back to cs, at about 1200 still no Swedes had arrived, after some phonecalls we found out that all of them were on their way somehow and SK was being held up because of a photoshoot. nip were the first to arrive, but seeing as they didnt have to play they left quickly to find some food. Some time after fnatic and sk also arrived and started to set up their stuff. fnatic had no real problems while setting up their pcs but allen and goodfella did have a minor problem with the game being started in a window but not in windowed mode, anyway thanks to the EPS admin sleeper we managed to fix this and all was set for a smooth event.
Both sk and fnatic needed to go up the stage for an interview with giga2. Each team pushed forward their dedicated speaker, and pushed can be taken very literally. For sk its goodfella doing all the talking while with fnatic its either carn, archi or dsn.
The game between the two was a great spectacle with a lot of enegery from both sides and in the end SK came out on top surprising many people with their solid play.
fnatic were really down after this loss and needed some time to pick themselves up and go up against nip.
Robban and zet both had a problem with their steam not wanting to log in. They kept giving in their details and said they didnt have internet and something was wrong and we needed to help them. So after 5 minutes of trying stuff i figured i woud try entering my details and guess what it worked. So the problem they had was pretty simple, the keyboard was still in the german language and thus the keys for the password didn mathc.
Anyway nip went on to play fnatic and won. During the entire match zet was the one taking heatons place as team motivators and yelled "fett nice" lmost everyround and with every kill. NiP looked prety solid after this match and seemed to be the favourite heading into the match against sk.
SK chose not to play dust2 vs NiP while NiP decided not to play inferno. The cointoss brought forward the map called de train. This is a great map and awlwasys brings some great action. ( btw: nuke wasnt ever picked as the map they did not want to play but it never won the cointoss, poor nuke )
NiP took the best start but sk countered with some great ECO tactics and set the tone for a very even and exciting half. The t side from sk had a great wallbang from allen, who once again showed that he has wallhack like vision on LAN. according to fisker (dead): wallhackor pa lan, or something like that.
nip tried everything in the second half but didnt look like they could counter sks good play. In the end SK earned the direct invitation into the final 24 of the Extreme Masters by ESL.
fnatic and nip will now have to play in one of the 4 other swedish qualifiers and hope they can win one of those.
While writing this blog i saw the new intel commercial featuring vilden and i must say it looks great. the first commercial was cool but was a bit far fetched and didnt show gaming. this one is totally focused around gaming and explains it a bt as well. eventhough vilden plays 1vs1 against another player it still shows more aspects of gaming. i hope you can all see the commercial soon and enjoyed it.




Here we go again

A couple of days ago a Belgian kid went to the city, bought himself a gun and shot three people ( of which 2 immigrants and one 2 year old baby ).
They were racist killings by a person who was going to kill himself but told his friends he would first try and take 10 others with him.
Now suddenly all the newspaper have headlines "Killer reenacted videogame!". In which they say how he often played GTA San Andreas, a game in which you have to go to a shop and buy a gun after which you have to kill people. And because this crazy son of a ***** also went to a shop and bought a gun the politicians and journalists say it is the same as playing the game.
Now what kind of logic is this?
What about his education, what about how he was bullied at school, what about he could walk into a store and buy a gun ( he even got a quick shooting and reloading lesson from the store clerk ), what about no one helping him mentally through all these years, what about .....
It never ceases to amaze me how people can blame videogames for everything bad in the world. I guess Sadam, Bush and other world leaders played Stratego too much when they were kids.



I wonder

Why is it that people with a big mouth or people who can sell themselves well usually get much more respect or much more credit than they deserve ?
Often their words can hide their lack of experience or achievements. They can even cover up things they did or did not do in the past. Especially in a non personal environment like the internet these people often get their way.
I bet you have all heard of so called eSports manager, sponsors, wararrangers, newsposters even players who have a big mouth but when you look at their actual accomplishments or their actual work in the past you'll quickly find out that they aren't all that.
Unfortunately this isn't just because of the childish nature of a lot of people in the eSports scene, just look at Arnold Schwarzenegger and how he got elected. I bet he will even be the President of the USA in a couple of years or decades. But would you trust someone like that ?
I'm sure some of you would.

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